#oneaday Day 622: Are we fucked? Revisited

Back in October of 2024, I wrote a post entitled "Are we fucked?" in which I was concerned about the direction the world appeared to be going. At the time, my main concern was with the growth of the AI space, and its seeming lack of any benefits whatsoever to humankind, while demonstrating its clear potential to cause very serious problems for both society and the environment.

That hasn't gone away. And neither has the other fear I expressed in that post: that, if Donald Trump would somehow, inexplicably, find himself in the White House once again, that America would become an unpleasant, unsafe place to be. In fact, things have ended up in that regard far worse than I think anyone could have imagined: a lawless "police" (and I use the term loosely) force gunning down innocent people in the streets; people being forced into utterly inhumane conditions having not committed a crime; the systematic revocation of a system of human rights we spent the best part of the last century putting in place, and which still had quite a bit of work to do.

Every day I look around at what the world has become and I am, honestly, scared. I feel like significant portions of the world have just gone completely insane.

Take the AI thing. AI is fucking everywhere now, despite it being abundantly clear that everyone except shareholders and C-Suite tossers hates it. It's making things worse. It's causing people's skills to atrophy at a frightening rate. It's destroying the environment. It's crashing the economy. It's making the Internet near-unusable in certain areas. And all for what? I couldn't tell you. All I can tell you is that the whole thing is a terrifying waste of money and resources, and I hope beyond hope that it will not be long until everyone wakes up and realises "what the fuck have we been doing?"

Except, at this point, with such a significant portion of the world's economy being propped up by this odious, utterly useless "industry", things coming crashing down are going to affect everyone — including those who have always been against this garbage. It's a financial disaster waiting to happen — and all the people who have spent the last few years completely discarding any practical skills in favour of "prompting" are going to be utterly screwed.

As many have pointed out, it's a symptom of a larger problem. The AI industry's dominance of things like the RAM and storage market are part of corporations' attempts to take away ownership of "The Computer" from individuals and force us all into "the cloud". Because if all we're using are dumb terminals to log on to the corporate cloud, that means the corporations can absolutely completely and utterly control what we can do. And everything that is wrong with politics and society right now can be laid at the feet of the few rich, corporate billionaires. Not coincidentally, pretty much all of them appear to have ties to legendary nonce Jeffrey Epstein.

I dunno man. I don't know how to deal with this any more. I'm scared for my future, and I'm scared for the world in general. I don't like it. This is not what "The Future" was supposed to be like. We had lots of cautionary tales telling us not to do all this shit — and yet we appear to have just gone and done it anyway.

The human beings with all the power absolutely suck, and they don't give a shit what all this is doing to regular-ass people, so long as it continues to make them more money than they will ever be able to spend in their lifetimes — money which will never, ever be spent on anything even vaguely approaching "the common good".

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 621: Tired

I am, as these things tend to go, back from my day at the office, following a horrible long drive home in the cold and wet, featuring a stop for a Burger King at Fleet Services that I honestly kind of regret now. I got back too late to pick up my prescription from Tesco, too, so that was annoying. If I hadn't stopped for the Burger King I might have made it. But oh well.

As a result of all this, I am extremely tired and my brain feels like it is firing on roughly 30% capacity. As such, I have started writing this without any particular topic in mind, so I'm just going to babble my way through it until I've done enough words to satisfy myself, and then, honestly, probably just go to bed.

Ooh, here's something I can talk about. Last night I got around to finally watching Pixels to Pages: The Story of Electronic Gaming Monthly, a well-regarded documentary put together as a collaborative affair between the My Life in Gaming and Game Sack channels. I have slightly mixed views on it, because while I cannot deny that it was a well-crafted, well-produced and beautifully edited documentary, it purports to be "the story of Electronic Gaming Monthly" while it is, in fact, "the story of Electronic Gaming Monthly's early years".

Since, as a Brit, I came to EGM rather late, primarily due to my brother taking up the Editor-in-Chief's reins in 1998, I only really knew it from when it was well into the Ziff-Davis era, and the documentary was disappointingly scant on anything from that age of the magazine. My brother got a passing mention as "they got some new guy in, I think he was from England?" and that was it; the vast majority of the documentary focused on the people who helped start it at Sendai Publications, with a few contributions from Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation and Dan "Shoe" Hsu, who joined EGM in 1996 and remained with it until 2008.

For context, EGM ran between 1988 and 2009, and the Ziff era started in 1996. To be fair, the story of EGM's early days is fascinating, and its history is populated by real characters, but it just seemed a bit odd for the documentary to position itself as telling the story of a publication and then just… not really acknowledge anything that happened after 1996 beyond a brief, cursory mention. I'm not just saying this because I'm biased and want to see a family member's contributions to the publication's legacy acknowledged — though that is, of course, part of it — it just felt a little odd to rush through a good 12 years of the magazine's existence as if they didn't matter.

Still, like I say, the documentary is a worthwhile watch, and even with its specific focus it's quite a lengthy affair. It's entirely possible that they just decided to focus on the early days because they thought that was the most interesting story to tell — and I reiterate, it is an interesting story! — or perhaps there was some reason people from the Ziff era were unable or unwilling to contribute their voices to the whole thing. The net result was that it left me with somewhat mixed feelings about the project as a whole, but happy to recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter.

Among other things, this documentary, along with the continuing excellent work of the Fun Factor podcast, has rekindled a desire to do more Magazine Stuff on my YouTube channel. So I'm going to do exactly that this weekend. There's a lot of different things I would like to cover, so you'll have to wait and see what I decide to do!

Anyway, that's enough of that. Time for bed.

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#oneaday Day 620: It's that time again

Yep, it's that time when I come at you live from a hotel room in sunny and fragrant Letchworth, ready and waiting for an invigorating day in the office tomorrow.

It took me over four fucking hours to get here today due to traffic on the sodding M25, but I did at least have some entertaining listening material in the form of a couple of Fun Factor podcast episodes that I hadn't yet gotten around to. And I've said it before, and will probably say it again, but this show is a great listen for anyone who, like me, grew up with video game magazines in the '80s and '90s.

I had a Taco Bell on the way down, though, so that was nice. Taco Bell in this country doesn't generally make one want to shit one's pants, and it's a nice change from the usual service station fare. I have also got a bag of freeze-dried sweets, because I saw them in Morrisons and was curious. They're quite nice, but also a bit like eating polystyrene. I don't dislike the experience, but I probably won't be in a hurry to get another bag.

I have brought a companion with me this time. This is Geoff:

Geoff was hastily hand-made for me by my wife after I got her a Valentine's Day gift and she had forgotten what date it was. (I wasn't mad, I wasn't expecting anything in return — I just like buying gifts!) When I say hastily, I mean it — she bashed him out in just a couple of hours, which is seriously impressive, and she is a wonderful person I am lucky to have in my life.

Why Geoff? Because Andie thought his mouth looks like a moustache, and from that I thought he looked like our head of sixth form, Mr Watts, whose first name was Geoff. So he's Geoff.

Anyway, that's about all for today because I'm typing on my phone and I hate doing that. So that's all you get for now. Have a lovely evening!

#oneaday Day 619: My kingdom for some new ideas

I watch a few YouTube channels that I would describe as "generic semi-mainstream entertainment". These include Good Mythical Morning, its spinoff Mythical Kitchen, and the Game Grumps spinoff, The Grumps (which primarily consists of their show, 10 Minute Power Hour). I enjoy all of these channels and generally watch most of the stuff they put out, but I can't help but notice a lot of channels like this seem to be stuck in a bit of a holding pattern of the same few ideas, over and over.

"We ate EVERYTHING by [brand]!" "We try VIRAL TikTok [trend]!" "We cook STRUGGLE MEALS!" The strength of the channels I've mentioned by name above is that they generally manage to put their own distinctive twist on things — Good Mythical Morning is heavily formulaic, but has a warmth to it that is very appealing to feel like you're included in; Mythical Kitchen's chaotic energy combined with genuine cooking skills and a willingness to experiment with unconventional concoctions is always enjoyable to watch; and The Grumps is always anarchic chaos — but I won't deny that I feel my heart sink just a little when I see those same old "content" trends being recycled over and over and over.

I think my least favourite of them is anything to do with TikTok, because that inevitably devolves into a significant part of the episode being watching people watching vertical videos of other people yelling at their camera, and I already find that format of video to be uncomfortable and annoying to watch. I also tend to dislike it when one creator's work is dependent on providing commentary on another creator's work; while none of the above-mentioned channels go about this in the "wrong" way, it absolutely can be a vector for abuse and exploitation, as veteran YouTuber Jacksfilms' spinoff channel JJJacksfilms highlights regularly.

My one exception to generally disliking "reaction" videos is when it's the Grumps reacting to their own stuff. A particular highlight in this regard is always any time the musicians "Sbassbear" get involved, remixing some of the more stupid moments from the Grumps' video game show into some real toe-tappers. Not only are the remixes brilliant in their own right, but the Grumps' reactions to them are always entertaining; it's a real "laugh along with them" moment in the same way as watching out-takes in which actors completely lose the plot and get the uncontrollable giggles is appealing.

Conversely, the one instance of the things above that I do tend to feel has legs is the "We tried everything by [brand]", because there's so many different types of things out there that you can explore, and each will result in quite a different video. Consider one video trying out every type of Oreo, and another trying every variety of Buldak noodles. Very different. The trouble is, even within this particular niche, you tend to see the same brands coming up all the time — with Oreos and Buldak being two of the prime offenders in this regard. It's one reason I'm quite fond of the CheapShow podcast's "Off-Brand Brand-Off" segment, in which they try own-brand and branded varieties of a single thing in order to determine which one, if any, is the "best".

I guess there are only a finite number of ideas in the world, and if you're making YouTube your career, you have to go where both the trends and "the algorithm" take you. And I guess that means making endless "We try VIRAL TikTok recipes!" videos. Which is a bit of a shame, because we, as humans, are capable of a lot more.

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#oneaday Day 618: Triple threat

Had a productive weekend of making some videos. There are three new ones on the way soon, and I've got another Wolfenstein one with its voiceover recorded that just needs assembling into some sort of shape.

For the upcoming videos, there's a couple of Master System games involved. The Sega Master System is a platform that I'm very fond of that doesn't get nearly enough love — and which I haven't spent nearly enough time fiddling with, either. So these two games will likely be the first of many in total. I'm looking forward to exploring the library further, because as a Japanese console that was particularly popular in Europe and failed to make any sort of impact whatsoever in America, it's a thoroughly interesting platform.

It's one of those situations where I'm not entirely sure why it never broke America, either. In technical terms, it's quite a bit better than the NES, but as numerous generations of console hardware dominated by Nintendo have shown, it's not always the most powerful system that wins the race. You've gotta have the games, you've gotta have the cultural penetration, and you've gotta have a lot of luck.

I guess one could argue that the NES has more "iconic" games — there are three Super Mario Bros. games alone on it — but the Master System has some solid versions of Sega arcade classics, and some truly excellent Sonic the Hedgehog games. While not as fancy-looking and sounding as their 16-bit counterparts, many argue that the Master System Sonic games are, in fact, the better entries in the series. I haven't quite made my mind up in that regard — I do love a 16-bit Sonic — but I do know from covering a huge heap of Sonic games a few years back on MoeGamer that the 8-bit Sonic games are very good indeed. (Just avoid the Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.)

Anyway, the Master System games I covered today come from two extremes of the "spectrum", if you want to call it that. There's one game that I imagine is pretty readily available for not much money (although interestingly CEX doesn't appear to have it listed) and another that is notoriously rare and expensive. After beating it in half an hour today, I'm glad I haven't spent £400 on it. It was fun for that half an hour, at least.

So yeah. Those videos, along with an Atari 8-bit port of a true classic, are on the way for the coming week. Watch out for them and please enjoy them when they're live! Or don't, if you don't want to, particularly after what I said yesterday. But it'd be nice if you did. My channel's over here, if you've never paid it a visit.

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#oneaday Day 617: Single screen

There are a few people I follow (and a few I've followed recently) that I primarily followed because I like what they do in terms of streaming — but I'm almost certainly never going to watch them. This is not because I dislike or do not enjoy what they do on their streams, but because I honestly don't understand how anyone has the time to sit and watch streamers.

This is probably at least partly a "me" problem. I am the sort of person who prefers to engage in a single activity at a time. If I'm playing a game, that's all I'm doing; splitting my attention between that and a podcast, video or stream feels like I'm being disrespectful to the developers of the game; they crafted it to be paid attention to, after all, and thus I feel like the least I can do is appreciate it as intended, with my full attention.

I sometimes feel like I'm in a bit of a minority in doing this, though. People talk a lot about "second screen content" — some streamers, like the excellent Josh Strife Hayes, make a recurring joke about it — but I've tried, and I just can't do it. The way my attentiveness works is that I can pay attention to one thing or the other, not both. If I'm paying attention to the game, I'm not listening to the podcast, video or stream; if I'm paying attention to the podcast, video or stream, I'm not giving the game my full attention.

I guess part of this is down to the games I play. I don't play any multiplayer-centric games or MMOs that demand you repeat things over and over again, and thus I don't really play anything that really lends itself to dividing your attention away from it. I am, as I always have been, generally inclined towards games with interesting stories or compelling mechanics, and in both of those instances you are robbing yourself of the full experience if you're not giving those your full attention. Perhaps I might feel a bit differently if I was grinding my way through a Battle Pass (ugh) or still on the Tomestone grind in Final Fantasy XIV, but I am not doing either of those things right now. I'm not ruling out a return to Final Fantasy XIV at some point, but I'm pretty certain my days of playing that game hardcore are well and truly behind me.

I mean, I guess I could have put a podcast or video or stream on while I was playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment recently? There are some repetitive missions in that, but then there are also story missions where I want to pay attention to what's going on, and I like enjoying the whole audio-visual experience of that game: the graphics; the sound; the music; the voice acting. Now I've reached the postgame, I could feasibly grind my way through some of those challenges with divided attention, but I'm not sure I'm going to do that; I'm likely going to move on to something else instead, and maybe dip into the postgame any time I just feel like punching Moblins.

My wife, meanwhile, has YouTube videos on constantly, whether she's playing Final Fantasy XIV or whichever farming and crafting game has caught her attention recently. She even does some work sometimes, inevitably with a YouTube video on.

See, I even find it quite difficult to do work with a distraction like a video, podcast or stream; I do work quite well with a musical accompaniment, mind. I think it's the talking. If someone is talking, my mind tells me, repeatedly, pay attention to this. And if, for whatever reason, I'm not able to, I start to feel genuinely stressed out. I know this because I'm very conscious of it any time someone tries to talk to me while I'm in the middle of, say, watching a video, or TV show, or something like that. Two people talking at the same time makes my brain melt and I don't like it.

The other completely unrelated issue is that many of the streamers I might otherwise be inclined to watch are often playing games that I want to play at some point. And if I haven't played that game myself yet, I will tend to avoid anything else about it online (including reviews) until I have at least tried it for myself. That's just a habit I've fallen into — although I must admit, there have been occasions where I have watched a YouTuber like GameGrumps or ProJared play something and thought "yeah, that looks fun, I'll give it a go myself".

Because yes, it's not that I don't watch any video game stuff online at all. We quite often watch Game Grumps with lunch or dinner. But those are 20-30 minutes at most, focused on the game (well, focused on Arin and Dan's experience of playing the game, at least) and coming to a clear conclusion after a set amount of time. Your average stream, meanwhile, is several hours long and includes boring bits of downtime, shout-outs to donations and subscribers and all that stuff, and I just find all that very distracting.

I dunno. I guess I just have to come to the conclusion that there are parts of the Internet experience today that I just don't really get and probably won't ever get. And I think I'm fine with that.

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#oneaday Day 616: When collecting goes too far

There's a listing on eBay right now for, I quote, "Unopened Vintage Super Mario Bros Kraft Cheez Whiz 1989 Glass Jar 7" Inches". It looks like this:

For the unfamiliar, Cheez Whiz is not supposed to be that colour. It is supposed to be this colour:

The seller, "Black Cat Antiques and Art", has put their Unopened Vintage Super Mario Bros Kraft Cheez Whiz 1989 Glass Jar 7" Inches on eBay for a selling price of $174.99 Canadian (about $128.57) and has claimed the condition is "new", but in the description is a little more honest about things:

This is being sold as a Collectable Container!

I have not opened this jar, however the lid seal may not be intact as it appears to be popped up. Likely from 33 years of sitting on a shelf. (I have not noted a smell)

Would you trust something that is that colour to not register a smell, particularly if its rancidity had forced the little poppy thing on the jar lid to pop — something which is only supposed to happen when you actually open the thing?

It continues:

PLEASE, do not open on receipt.

1. Value will drop significantly

2. It won't taste good, and may cause significant medical issues including…. (Anything you can imagine)

3. It will likely smell bad, really really bad!

4. You may haves opened the last bottle in existence.

PLEASE, don't do it!

Number 1 and 4 are the things that interest me here. Black Cat Antiques and Art appears to think that having a glass jar in the shape of Mario that is full of Cheez Whiz so old it has turned the colour of chocolate spread is somehow worth $174.99 Canadian (or Best Offer) — and, moreover, appears to think that opening the jar to remove the biohazard within will hurt its value significantly.

Not only that, they appear to think that there is some sort of inherent value in keeping the contents intact, even though they also admit that it will probably make you very sick indeed.

I mean, come on, man, it's Cheez Whiz. The jar is vaguely interesting, but as a "collectable container" it's not especially useful or collectable if there's a chance that what's inside might be sentient and waiting to devour you in your sleep. (For reference, empty instances of the same jar are currently listed on eBay for anywhere between $25 and $55 Canadian — this was evidently a Canada-specific product)

"No, no, no, don't open it, you'll tank the value" is by no means uncommon in the collectors market. Hell, there are people out there who buy two of every Evercade release "to keep one sealed" for some reason. But this is perhaps the most baffling instance I have ever seen of it.

Who would want this? For anything other than a funny bit online, I mean. (There are, at the time of writing, a couple of folks deliberating over buying this for the funnies, including Dan Ryckert of Giant Bomb.) Like, I want to meet the sort of collector who thinks buying a jar of rancid Cheez Whiz for over a hundred dollars is somehow a good investment. And then I want to ask them, sincerely, why?

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#oneaday Day 615: No context cats

The above image has nothing to do with what I want to talk about today. Or maybe it does. I haven't decided yet, because I don't really know what I'm going to write about yet — despite having already started writing.

I have days like this, where I think "what should I blog about?" and nothing comes readily to mind. I've found the best approach when this happens, pretty consistently, is just to open a document, start typing and let random thoughts spill out onto the page. If they make sense, great. If they don't, you can look back on it as an entertaining stream of consciousness, perhaps providing a bit of insight into what might have been going through my mind at the time.

Today has been a funny old day. Not because of anything I've been directly involved with, really, but just people have been in a bit of a funny mood. Notably, a Discord server I'm part of, which primarily consists of middle-aged men who make YouTube videos about old tech and software (like me), had a big old tiff in its #general channel that was frankly kind of bewildering to see unfold. The main instigator has been "timed out" for a week, so I guess it remains to be seen whether or not he will be back — and if he is, if he will have changed his attitude at all.

Elsewhere, I was having a conversation with some friends in the Squadron of Shame Discord server, and it brought back to my mind the fact that I don't feel like I really remember my 30s all that much. There's a block of a good 10 years or so that is just sort of a dark spot in my memory. It hasn't gone completely, because if I think back over it I can remember bits and pieces — and if I look back at blog posts from that era, I get an even clearer reminder — so it's perhaps more accurate to say that period of time just sort of passed by in a blur without me really intending or wanting it to.

Some of that is down to a few mildly to moderately traumatic happenings I was dealing with in that period, all of which are now, thankfully, things of the past — though as anyone who has suffered trauma will know, just because the cause of said trauma is not present any more, it doesn't mean it stops affecting you. Part of my "lost decade" is almost certainly my brain telling me "don't go back there, there's nothing fun back there to remember" and I should probably listen to it.

But it wasn't all bad, and there are things I miss from back then. Seeing friends. Having friends. Going out and doing things. Not being the size and level of unfitness I am now. Not having a hernia. Having the passion and enthusiasm to write something on MoeGamer every day and make multiple videos a week.

A lot of things are better now, of course. I'm in a stable job that pays well, as is my wife Andie. We're getting our windows and doors done soon. I have a HeroQuest campaign on the go. I have a satisfyingly large game collection that will probably last me until the day I die. I am in control of, and proud of, the various websites that I have, at this point, held for many years. We have two wonderful cats (pictured).

And yet with the way the world is right now, it's hard to feel entirely happy, because there are so many things that are concerning about the short- to medium-term future. And it's difficult to escape from them. Impossible, in some cases. I fear for what the next few years hold, both in terms of things in my personal sphere, and more broadly about the world in general.

But right now, just this second, as I type this, things are All Right. So I should probably enjoy these moments of things being All Right while I can. So that's what I'm going to go and do now.

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#oneaday Day 614: Can you hear us, sketching on your telephone

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my smartphone recently. The USB-C port in my trusty Samsung Galaxy S-something was being rather unreliable, and I was getting fed up with it. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about upgrading, though, because every single phone on offer appeared to be festooned with unwanted "AI" features.

I plumped for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, because my provider had a good offer on it, and I thought I might as well take advantage of it. It's an absolute beast of a phone size and weight-wise, which I rather like — but one thing I didn't know about it before I got hold of it was the fact it comes with an "S-pen" stylus.

This makes me quite happy, because I have fond memories of using Palm personal organisers with a stylus and resistive touchscreen, and I've always felt using your sweaty, greasy fingers is suboptimal compared to the precision one can get from a stylus.

One mild annoyance I have discovered with the stylus is that MagSafe accessories interfere with it, so if you have something like a magnetic PopSocket on the back, it fucks with the stylus. This is irritating, but not an insurmountable obstacle; the thing with a MagSafe PopSocket is that it's a lot easier to remove and put back on again compared to an adhesive one, so it's relatively little hassle to just remove the PopSocket when I want to use the pen, then stick it back on afterwards. But I digress.

I thought today I'd experiment with using the pen to draw something using the mobile version of Clip Studio Paint. And the results are… well, a bit cack-handed, as you can see above, but I can definitely see potential there. I've learned something from this brief little doodle, which is that if you're sketching on a phone, for heaven's sake zoom in and do a little bit at a time rather than trying to do the whole thing at once.

Imprecisions aside, though, I was actually quite pleased with the S-pen's performance for doodling, and the mobile version of Clip Studio Paint seems quite good. It's an annoying subscription-based app, because of course it is, but you can use it for up to 30 hours a month for free without ads. I strongly suspect I won't hit that limit, but I guess we'll see! I will continue to experiment with both the S-pen and the tablet I got for Christmas, and see where things go from there.

The phone in general seems pretty good for the most part. The screen is lovely, the speakers are surprisingly good and the cameras are excellent. I just wish it didn't bug you to "do more with AI!" when attempting to do something simple like make a note. No, black rectangle of doom, I do not need you to "summarise" my notes. The very point of making notes is already a summary of what to think about later. Nor do I need you to turn a doodle into something that is not a doodle. Fuck off and leave me alone and we'll get along just fine.

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#oneaday Day 613: The impenetrability of certain sports games

One thing I found while doing my Atari A to Z Flashback series a few years back was that I actually rather enjoyed a lot of Atari 2600 sports games — because they put "being a fun video game" first, a realistic simulation of the sport a distant second. Likewise, I rather enjoy Irem's 10 Yard Fight, as it is by far the most accessible take on American football I think I've ever seen — with Doug Neubauer's Super Football for Atari 2600 close behind.

The reason these games are so accessible is because they implement the sort of basic understanding of the rules that can be picked up very quickly and don't get bogged down in the intricacies. They don't assume knowledge beyond "man kick ball, score point" and don't throw you in at the deep end with a series of impenetrable-seeming options that, as a beginner, you have no idea what to do with.

I've felt like this about American football titles in particular for a very long time, ever since I first played the original John Madden Football on Sega Mega Drive all those years ago. Yes, the parallaxing, quasi-3D field was super-impressive, and back then that was reason enough to boot the game up, but as soon as those "play selection" screens popped up, I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do with them.

And what's worse, the documentation for those games doesn't explain anything about it, either — meaning that, for someone who has only ever been vaguely aware of American football as a sport that exists, and who occasionally was allowed to stay up late with his Dad to watch it on Channel 4, there is seemingly no real route "in" to picking up and enjoying these games. And, rather than modern games getting more accessible and inclusive, they've just become more and more complex over time.

I feel the same about wrestling games. The last time I played a wrestling game was Smackdown 2 on the original PlayStation, and I didn't entirely understand what was going on there. Oh, sure, I knew what the buttons did, but not how you were actually supposed to use those buttons effectively to demonstrate your skill at the game.

I've tried wrestling games that came out both before and after it, and I have not found a single one where I felt comfortable that I could explain to anyone else "how to play". At least Smackdown 2 had that incredible character creator, and to be honest, that was where the majority of the appeal was — we had many a drunken night at university making digital recreations of people we knew, cartoon characters and, on one memorable occasion where my friend managed to get the sliders to go outside of their usual ranges, an absolutely horrific looking monster known as "The Freak", who would burst on stage with his iconic war cry, "Baggogh!", and stare his opponents down with a growled "Durgogh."

Every so often, I get a strange urge to want to learn how to play either American football and/or wrestling games. And every time I am hit with the same issue: there does not appear to be any good way to "learn" them. There do not appear to be any helpful guides online that don't assume you already know how to play the games (and have an in-depth knowledge of the sports themselves); the documentation for them is threadbare at best and non-existent at worst; and any "tutorial" or "training" modes in the games focus on telling you which button does what, rather than actually how to play effectively.

I feel like there would be a good article or two in learning how to play these games! I could even tell other people how to learn how to play them, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who has looked at these two genres (and other, related types of game like, say, baseball, or football management) and thought "I'd bet I'd like that if I understood it"!

Only trouble is, I don't understand them. And I don't even know where to begin doing something about that!

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